Hezbollah says will respond to Israeli air strike

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah will respond to an Israeli air
strike that hit one of its bases on the border with Syria on
Monday night, the Lebanese militant group said on Wednesday.

"The new aggression is a blatant assault on Lebanon and its
sovereignty and its territory... The Resistance (Hezbollah) will
choose the time and place and the proper way to respond to it,"
Hezbollah said in a statement.

The strike, which Israel has not confirmed, hit the
Lebanese-Syrian border near the Bekaa Valley village of Janta,
Hezbollah said. It denied reports that the strike targeted
artillery or rocket bases and said there were no casualties.

Lebanese security sources have said they believed that any attack
took place on Syrian soil, but Hezbollah's reference to Lebanese
sovereignty suggested it took place on the Lebanese side of the
ill-defined frontier.

Israeli planes have struck areas on the Syrian side of the border
several times in the last two years but, if confirmed, an air
strike on Lebanese soil would be the first since the Syrian
revolt began in 2011.

The eastern Lebanon-Syrian border area is frequently used by
smugglers and Lebanese security sources say the target of Israeli
strikes in Syria may have been trucks of weapons destined for
Hezbollah.

Israel has voiced alarm that amid the chaos of Syria's civil war,
weapons could be transferred to Hezbollah, which is supporting
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fight an insurgency but has
traditionally fought Israel.

Israel's military chief Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz reiterated
those fears on Sunday, a day before the strike, when he accused
Iran, Assad's ally and Hezbollah's patron, of moving weapons to
the militant group.

"There is no theatre in which Iran is not involved - giving out,
if you like, torches to pyromaniacs - whether this is munitions
or missiles or intervention in the fighting," he said.

"We are tracking the processes of arms transfers in all of the
operational theatres. This is something that is very, very
negative. This is something that is very, very sensitive. And
from time to time, when the need arises, things can happen."

Israel's Channel 10 television on Tuesday broadcast what it said
were satellite images of the locations struck, which appeared to
show missile silos being readied for weapons.

The Lebanese army reported that four Israeli planes had flown
across north Lebanon on Monday night towards the Bekaa Valley
before heading southwest towards the Mediterranean near Lebanon's
southern border with Israel. Israeli jets regularly fly through
Lebanese airspace without permission.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not claim or deny the
strike but said on Tuesday Israel would "do everything required
to safeguard the security of the citizens of Israel."

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes and Dominic Evans in
Beirut and Dan Williams and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Editing
by Janet Lawrence)